The first big mistake I made as a DBA was coming to work with my zipper wide open. But I digress.Hear one of my most popular session via streaming media at SQLSentry.TV!Microsoft SQL Server is easier to administrate than any other relational database on the market. But “easier than everyone else” doesn’t mean it’s easy. And it doesn’t ...

(Originally appearing at http://kevinekline.com/2013/10/09/wait-statistics-in-sql-server/).When it comes to troubleshooting in relational databases, there's no better place to start than wait statistics. In a nutshell, a wait statistic is an internal counter that tells you how long the database spent waiting for a particular ...

I had the honor of traveling the great state of Colorado last week, speaking at the PASS chapters in Boulder, Colorado Springs, and Denver. At all three events, we had a stellar attendance and, at least in Denver, broke all the records in recent memory both in terms of overall attendance and in first-timers. ...

One of the things that I enjoy about working for Quest Software is that we give back copiously to the community. From activities and offerings like SQLServerPedia, to our free posters mailed anywhere in North America (and don't forget the free hi-res PDFs for the rest of the world),
Don't forget that free DVDs of our virtual conferences ...

You might encounter a situation, under a very heavy workload, where processing for certain transactions starts out very efficiently, but over time becomes much less efficient.
A good place to start troubleshooting is, of course, PerfMon. But PerfMon can fail to reveal the culprit, since the CPU can remain stable and moderate ...